Reimagined Concert: USC Symphonic Winds

For my concert critique, I went to the “Reimagined” Concert on Sunday, October 18 at the Koger Center for the Arts, where the USC Symphonic Winds performed. The idea of the concert was to show how the ensemble reimaged the musical piece, or how the musical piece itself had been reimaged in the past. Many of the pieces were different from what one would expect at a symphonic winds concert, but they definitely grabbed the audience’s attention. The first piece the ensemble played was “Kill Screen” composed by Matthew Browne and you could undoubtedly say this piece grabs your attention and is a great choice to open with. The abrupt, loud start was very dramatic and brooding, and this presence continued through the whole piece. Browne intended

Overall, the happy and triumphant mood was exhibited through the consonance and major key. The first movement, “The Earle of Oxford March,” had a moderate tempo and a triumphant sound with lots of trumpets and percussion. It stayed between mezzo forte and mezzo piano mostly throughout the song, which was much more comforting than the other piece. The second movement, “Pavana,” was also in a major key, but the characteristic that struck me most was the trumpets playing their own melody while the other brass instruments played softly in the background. The third movement, “Jhon com kisse me now,” starts off calm and triumphant in its major key just as the others. It has counterpoint with the trumpets and clarinets, which I thoroughly enjoyed since I played clarinet and my brother played trumpet in middle school. There was a gradual crescendo during this movement as the brass and percussion became easier to distinguish, but it receded again near the end as the winds prevailed and carried the piece to a calm end. The fourth movement, “Wolsey’s Wilde,” had lots of counterpoint. There was some counterpoint between the trumpets and the whole band, and also between the clarinets and flutes, which were both marked by consonant melodies. The fifth movement, “The Bells,” starts with a counterpoint between the trumpets and the French horns and eventually the whole band joins in on the counterpoint which was an amazing way to begin the conclusion of this piece and the ensemble did a brilliant job of coming in at the right times and not being too loud or abrupt. Throughout the movement, there was repetitive counterpoint between each group of instruments, and then the whole band responding. The ending began to crescendo and used consonance to conclude the triumphant piece as it had